Blast from the Past: The Clubhouse

If Hercules has anything that qualifies as a cultural icon, a symbol of what it meant to live in a true company town, it would have to be the clubhouse.

At the behest of Powder Works employees and with acceptance from the Superintendent, funding was appropriated and plans begun for a social hall in 1897.  After a slight delay due to the Spanish-American War, construction began in 1899 and was completed by 1901.

The ground floor consisted of a barber shop, billiard tables, card room, dance floor (which could be converted to a boxing ring), stage, kitchen, reading room, library, and showers and baths.  The basement housed a swimming pool, quite uncommon at the time.  The pool was later removed and replaced with a two-lane bowling alley, which still exists.

The top floor, which was a later addition, had many uses during its lifetime, from a meeting hall to City Council chambers to a gathering place for the local Boy Scout troop.

According to the Hercules Mixer (Dec. 1919), the clubhouse also contained a commissary, "where soft drinks, tobacco, and candy may be purchased.  It is not intended that profit shall be made by the commissary, and the prices charged are only sufficient to help pay expenses.  By far the greater part of the club's revenue is from dues, each member paying one dollar a month ... The club is controlled and conducted by the plant force.  A board of supervisors is elected by the members."

Clubhouse activities included, again from the Mixer, "Fortnightly entertianments ... sometimes consisting of moving picture shows and at other times of entertainments by vaudevillians from San Francisco."

The clubhouse remained in use well into the 1990's.  The Historical Society conducted a resotoration in the 1980's which included the bar area, restrooms, back porch, commercial kitchen, and a new roof.  It currently sits idle, but it is hoped this jewel of our past will once again be the center of social activity as part of a thriving waterfront community.

I'll leave it to the political pages of this site to debate if that will ever come to pass.